U.S. failures in Iraq set stage for deeper trouble

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Mon, 31 Jan 2005 16:38:06 -0500

 

 

 

U.S. failures in Iraq set stage for deeper trouble

 

 

 

http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=684

 

WSWS : News & Analysis : Middle East : Iraq

 

 

 

 

Iraq elections set stage for deeper crisis of US occupation regime

 

By Patrick Martin

31 January 2005

 

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The election January 30 in Iraq marks a further intensification of the

contradictions confronting American imperialism, both in Iraq and at

home. It will neither resolve the crisis of the American stooge regime

in Baghdad, hated and despised by the vast majority of the Iraqi

people, nor legitimize the US occupation in the eyes of world and

among large sections of the American public.

 

George W. Bush emerged from the White House briefly to make a

triumphal statement hailing the vote. The US media carried

wall-to-wall, gushing coverage all day Sunday. But even the combined

propaganda powers of the US government and the corporate-controlled

media machine cannot transform an election held at gunpoint and under

military occupation into a genuinely democratic event.

 

Initial reports on voter turnout were driven by the political

imperative to put the best possible face on the election and influence

public opinion in the United States, which is increasingly turning

against the war. The turnout figure began at 90 percent plus—numbers

reported, naturally enough, on Fox News. Then an Iraqi election

official put the figure at 72 percent nationwide. This was

subsequently lowered to 60 percent nationwide, then to 60 percent " in

some areas. "

 

The compliant US media dutifully swallowed all these numbers in

succession, never challenging their accuracy or questioning how each

figure could be so quickly supplanted by a lower one as the day wore on.

 

The 72 percent figure, for instance, issued just before the polls

closed, was inherently improbable, given that most polling places did

not even open in the Sunni Triangle. With the vast majority of Sunnis,

some 20-25 percent of Iraq's people, boycotting the election, turnout

among the rest of the population would have to be near-unanimous to

bring the total up to 72 percent.

 

The reports on turnout were supplemented by television news footage of

happy Iraqis celebrating their new-found freedom to vote, praising the

American military, and thanking President Bush. There is ample reason

to believe that these scenes were largely staged for the benefit of

the media—like the scenes of Iraqis tearing down the statue of Saddam

Hussein in Firdos Square after the US invasion nearly two years ago.

(Similar scenes were a hallmark of the Baathist dictatorship as well,

with cheering crowds vowing to sacrifice their lives for Saddam.)

 

According to Robert Fisk of the Independent, a major British daily

newspaper, " The big television networks have been given a list of five

polling stations where they will be `allowed' to film. Close

inspection of the list shows that four of the five are in Shiite

Muslim areas—where the polling will probably be high—and one in an

upmarket Sunni area, where it will be moderate. " Sunni working class

areas were entirely off limits, he noted.

 

In some cases, the media reports were literally military propaganda

handouts. ABC News, for instance, reported thousands of voters in

Fallujah, the city virtually destroyed by the US military onslaught

last November. The source for this report of surprisingly high turnout

was the US military command in the shattered city. Meanwhile, other

news outlets put the turnout in Fallujah as minuscule, on a par with

the other predominantly Sunni cities where few polls opened and few

voters turned out.

 

The major theme of the media blitz was that the Iraqi people had

thronged to the polls in defiance of threats of violence from the

insurgent groups opposed to the US occupation. Such coverage ignores

the largest purveyor of fear and violence in Iraq by far: the American

military occupation, which leveled Fallujah and has blitzed many other

Iraqi cities, including Ramadi, Samarra and Mosul, all centers of the

Sunni population.

 

http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=684

 

 

 

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hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds however, the timid join

him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.- - Mark Twain

 

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change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has - -

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act.-- George Orwell

 

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